Yet Again The Anatomy Of The Elephant

There used to be a lot of school kids crowding the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Maryland, a few miles south of Washington. Their teachers would haul them in by the busload--more than a thousand a year. The museum is housed in the homestead of one of the conspirators who was hanged for the murder of Abraham Lincoln. It's small, but it offers an unexpectedly comprehensive review of the Civil War, with a special emphasis on the assassination, and for years grade-school teachers in southern Maryland have used a field trip there as a convenient way to keep their students awake long enough to introduce them to an important episode in their nation's history. In the last couple years, though, attendance has dried up--cut by more than half, according to Laurie Verge, the museum's director. Laurie is a former history teacher herself. From talks with old colleagues, she's pretty sure how to account for the undesired quiet that has fallen over her museum most weekdays: "The schools just don't have as much room for history or social studies in their curriculums any more," she says. "Ever since No Child Left Behind."

And so on, and so forth, almost endlessly. The Big Management Party neocomrade author, one "Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD," seems on balance to be on Laurie's side, and who's to say it's not the better side, after all? Señorito Andy wants ideological wombschoolin', ALL the little kiddies to be SYSTEMATICALLY indoctrinated/intoxicated with militant extremist Grant Party values, whereas the authentically payroll-meetin' classes will settle for mere literacy, plus maybe she knows how to count change? Fancy Daddy Warbucks confronted with a solid wall of hired hands who are dab hands at AEIdeology and are rather more agog for Political Capitalism than Warbucks himself!

Any proper neo-conman ought to side with the Creative Destructionist faction of course: kids, like foreigners, exist mainly to read instructions and count change. Everybody knows that! (Doesn't she?) Let no idle sentimentality ever obstruct!

However no rule is proved unless it has it's "but-what-about?' exceptions, so of course a Pipesovitch Party Prince must naturally go to Harvard and learn to worry about trickier matters than countin' change and readin' instructions.

One begs pardon of God as regards the Elephant People!